A Study Of Yang Yi's Translation Of Wuthering Heights, As Compared To Fang Ping's Version From Sherry Simon's Feminist Translation Theory

Over the 1970s, the interplay between feminism and translation studies in the west exercised great forceful influences on the traditional concepts of translation theory and practice studies, undoubtedly making great achievements. Gender in Translation:Cultural identity and the politics of transmission, written by the famous Canadian translation theorist Sherry Simon, is the first comprehensive study of gender issues in translation theory and practice. From feminist translation theorists'points of view, fidelity is to be directed toward neither the author nor the reader, but toward the writing project—a project in which both writer and translator participate. In this opinion, the absolute authority of original authors is being questioned and the subjectivity of translators has been emphasized. Feminist translators have boldly put some translation strategies into practice for achieving this idea. The present author attempts to study on Yang Yi's translation of Wuthering Heights, as compared to Fang Ping's from the perspective of Sherry Simon's feminism translation theories.Wuthering Heights, a masterpiece, written by the female novelist—Emily Bront? in the 19th century, which is a unique novel filled with feminine features and rich imagination, certainly has caused many researchers'concern. The thesis offers some representative examples to comparatively analyze the two Chinese versions from the two main aspects—the depiction of objective scenery and imaging of characters (the heroine Catherine and the important narrator Nelly). It focuses on the part of Yang Yi's version in which contains the strong feminine characteristics in the original novel. Yang Yi, as a female translator, experiences more strong and profound understanding of the female characteristics than the male translator. She tries to foreground her awareness of womanhandling over the original text. Yang is loyal to the original but also has more sense of domination over it. Her version seems to be more readable, which adds feminine features which contain appreciation and affection for the female images in the novel from a woman's angle. Comparatively speaking, Fang Ping, as a male translator, performs differently from Yang Yi, subconsciously presenting his naturalized male dominance over the text and prejudice toward women in the translated text. Surely, the thesis aims not to evaluate which version is better, but to demonstrate that to certain extent the translators'gender identities could have exerted some influence on their language expressions and translation style. After the comparative analysis, the thesis aims to advocate the concepts of feminist translation theory that female translators should cast away the conventional concepts—"Translators are handmaidens to authors, women inferior to men", and should involve the replacement of the conventional modest-self-effacing performance and foreground the feminine subjectivity or visibility, highlighting feminism consciousness of womanhandling over original texts.